Journal

Thursday, January 31, 2008

The days that pay for the bad ones...

There's an odd point in writing, when you reach a bit that you've known was going to happen for years. Years and years. And then it doesn't happen like you thought it would...

It's as if there's a ghost-story behind the text and nobody knows it's there but me.

Still on Chapter Seven of The Graveyard Book, but I'm well into the last half of the chapter, and it no longer feels like I'm walking towards the horizon, with the horizon retreating as I advance... I've written about eleven easy pages today, and cannot wait to get back to it. If I'm still awake and writing I may pull an all-nighter.

It barely feels like I'm writing it. Mostly it feels like I'm the first one reading it.

Pretty soon now, Mr Ketch will fall down a hole. Mr Dandy, Mr Nimble and Mr Tar will have a gate opened for them, and the man Jack will get just what he always wanted...

...

And look, Bill Hader is selling Lafferty to the world, via the New York Times.

(And hurrah, he's also plugging Joe Hill, Clive Barker and John Wyndham. But it's the Lafferty that put the smile on my face. I'm going to give a talk in Tulsa this summer, mostly because I want to visit the Lafferty manuscripts...) (And here is Lafferty's own short story, "Nine Hundred Grandmothers", for those of you who want something to read.)

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